Pathetic Fallacy - is this a "thing"

[marmia1234]

My sons English report came home ( disclaimers: not in UK and I have a degree in English Literature)
In one section of the test they had to match a quote to its corresponding technique. For example - simile, imagery, metaphor, personification etc. One of those techniques was "pathetic fallacy" . I am flummoxed. Is this a normal thing I just missed somehow? Once he had a stab at which one was the "pathetic fallacy he was stuffed and only got 4 right out of 7 as was a bit discombobulated. Is this a common term in the UK or US
I have googled and it appears to be a version of personification.
Why is it pathetic?
Trying to add poll but seem to be unable.
YABU - everybody knows the term "Pathetic fallacy"
YANBU - WTF nobody has heard of that

Thanks. I was just coming on to say it is a thing (although I understand why many people wouldn’t know/had forgotten it) but I’ve always wondered why it’s called that!

Sorry OP, I’m also astounded you have an Eng Lit degree and have not come across this term. I learnt about this in school pre GCSE. Where did you study?

Yes, this is also my understanding of PF

Yes. The sort of thing you cram into your head then mostly forget about after exams.
See also ‘split diagraph’. I still remember being surprised when my primary school son came out with that and I have an English A Level.

It depends how you feel about your family, but very possibly 😂

I work in a uk primary school and it’s taught in our English lessons.

I remember it from GCSE in the 90s.

I have never heard of it (in my 50s) and am really surprised so many people are saying it's mainstream and a common term! I wasn't really taught grammar at school though (and never studied King Lear as a pp asked)

It is overused and misused in English teaching in the UK.

It comes from John Ruskin who used it as a criticism for Romantic poets who overused the relationship between the weather and feelings as a trope.

Anything pre-Romantics is an anachronism.

The idea that the macrocosm responds to the microcosm has been around for longer and that is what Shakespeare is doing, for example.

Not a thing when I did GCSE English Lit, but taught to pretty much every Y6 in the country for their SATs.

How could you have an English degree and not know this?! It’s GCSE terminology.

I don’t remember it from GCSE or A-level English!

My son is in yr 5 and him being able to use pathetic fallacy in his writing was highlighted by his teacher. I also had to google it, I had absolutely no idea what it meant either. I must have learned it when I did English a levels but have no memory of doing so.

King Lear was also one of my study books, maybe I slept through that bit 😆

No, because nobody is writing a novel about your day 😂.

OP, I got a degree without coming across it too. I'm sure I would have identified and described it as a technique without using the term though. I'm in my late forties and my school education included very few of these sorts of terms. I only found out about sentence structures when I did A Level Spanish. Somehow I got good degree!

Pathetic fallacy is a great example of how ridiculous the curriculum has become for young children. It starts being taught and referred to in Year 4, which is nonsense as there are so many more important aspects of Enlgish they really need time to become more secure on. The expectations on such young children are crazy.

Do you mean that it is anachronistic to apply it as a term of literary criticism to works of art/literature that preceded Ruskin's coinage of it? Or are you saying something different from this?

Surely a device can precede someone's decision to name it - so that it is legit to apply the term to earlier works of art/literature?

I know every year 6 SATS paper pretty well, since about 2018 onwards and a question about pathetic fallacy has not featured once.

Some teachers might make reference to it, regarding writing and figurative language generally, but it is not a required term.

Pathetic is from the Greek "pathos" (suffering/feeling) - pathetic has traditionally meant "affecting the emotions". Nothing to do with modern meaning. Pathetic fallacy is when the setting of a scene is dark/stormy to mirror the emotions of the characters.

*CheeseTime it’s * not like split diagraphs which is a basic primary phonics term which is never taught at secondary so it’s not surprising your son used it and you didn’t know it.

I genuinely have no idea if I learnt/used the term as part of my A level or degree but I have taught it for 20 years. It’s very common in Shakespeare and Dickens too but it’s possible previously it was just discussed as weather being used to create an atmosphere/reflect characters moods rather than using the specific term.

I've heard of it but think it's a rather strange term. All metaphors are fallacious on a strictly literal reading? I'd think of it more as a sympathetic / empathetic fallacy - ' the sky was mourning her departure' etcetera

In philosophy, which borrowed the term from lit crit, it means giving feelings (pathos) to an inanimate object or abstract concept. It's really common in science, where it is definitely a fallacy, but hard to avoid. "The electrons want to take the path of least resistance," "the species tries to adapt to its environment."

Sorry OP I've known this for about 20 years, one of the first things I learnt in gcse lit

Completely standard literary term. I learnt about it for O level, if not earlier. I also have A level and a degree in English.

*PhotoDad *

In English lit we would use the term personification for that.